


Don't you want me?

by marysutherland



Series: Anthea's interests [4]
Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: F/F, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-05-01
Updated: 2012-05-01
Packaged: 2017-11-04 16:34:56
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 14,529
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/395916
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/marysutherland/pseuds/marysutherland
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"Anthea" had a relationship ten years ago with Sarah, when she was a student in London, but broke it off when she joined the civil service. Now she's helped bring Sherlock and John together, should she resume contact or not?</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Betaed by [Greywash](http://archiveofourown.org/users/greywash/).   
> No Series 2 spoilers and not compatible with it.  
> Much of this story follows on from [Do you want to know a secret?](http://archiveofourown.org/works/335856)

You couldn't expect to get what you wanted if you didn't know _what_ it was that you wanted. Anthea had always known that. Even Anne Zimmerman had known that, before she had become Anthea Zelig.

She didn't want to be Anne again. Who but a fool wanted to return to their early twenties? Looking back, her ignorance had been incredible, even if her taste in women had been better than she realised. One woman, at least. Because it had been Anne who had got involved with – no, she must admit it, fallen for – Sarah Sawyer all those years ago.

It was still ridiculous, she told herself, even as she skimmed the day's report on Sarah. There had been nothing remarkable about her ten years ago: there was nothing remarkable now. Why should the actions of a thirty-eight-year-old divorced GP be of interest to anyone?

They weren't to Mycroft, of course, or only indirectly. As she expected, when she clicked on the video clip attached to this day's report, Sarah was talking to John Watson. He was still at Security Grade 3 Active, so that even his most trivial interactions had to be watched. Although not normally by her, thank God.

She recognised the location as the back office at Elmside Surgery, and wondered whether this was yet another discussion of NHS funds. Or of Karen the receptionist's sickness record, about which she was now, by force, well acquainted. She didn't know why Sarah put up with some of the staff she had to manage.

"John," Sarah said a little awkwardly.  "Karen was a bit worried about your arm." She looked as professional as ever, Anthea thought: auburn hair tied back, the minimal make-up that nevertheless cleverly emphasised her delicate bone structure, the plain blouse hiding her beautiful body.

"What about it?" John Watson asked casually. "I'm probably a bit pasty at the moment, but that's the point of wearing short sleeves, to get a tan."

"You have scars on your arm."

"I've got scars in a lot of places, you should know that." He was smiling at Sarah, and if Anthea had been there, she might possibly have hit him.

"Star-shaped scars, Karen said," Sarah said. "Looking as if they'd been deliberately inflicted. As if you'd been branded." She still sounded remarkably calm.

"Ah, those. Sorry about that, I thought the sleeve covered them."

"They're on your left triceps, and you're left-handed. I think even if you did want to make pretty patterns on yourself, you wouldn't try doing it in such an awkward position. So what's Sherlock up to?"

"I suppose you could call it branding, though it's done with extreme cold rather than heat. Sherlock wanted to see how long before the marks faded, because we know they're not permanent."

"He could have experimented on himself."

"The victim was more my build, and I cope better with pain," John said, as calmly as if this was a normal conversation. "I did use local anaesthetic first, but it wasn't as effective as I'd hoped. But as I said, no permanent damage."

"This time," said Sarah. She paused and then added, "Just make sure you take care of yourself, OK? Because you can be sure that Sherlock won't."

"Sorry if I upset anyone," he said. "I didn't mean to."

The clip ended there and Anthea made a few rapid notes for Mycroft. Sherlock still investigating the Blauer Stern gang, no sign of tension between him and John, no significant security breaches. She did not need to play the clip again. And it was hardly new information that Sarah was intelligent and practical and caring. It was not even important information. Especially when she still had daily reports on sixteen other people to check.

***

Anthea rattled through the remaining files: the perennial sorting of the significant from the trivial, the deluded and pathetic from the deluded and dangerous. She could probably go home on time tonight, provided a crisis didn't arise in the next six minutes. Which she was not going to spend thinking about Sarah, but writing up tomorrow's to do list. It was just that she needed to double-check that the keywording of the video clip had conformed to protocols. No use collecting data you couldn't find again, was it?

She stopped the clip halfway through her second viewing. Her...physiological reactions to the video were ridiculous. She could go out tonight to a club and find someone younger and sexier than Sarah. On her Blackberry she had the contact details for women who were far more powerful, far cleverer than Dr Sawyer. If she wanted to meet any of them – have sex with them – that too could be arranged. Sarah might be a possibility, but she was hardly an optimal one.

***

"I see myself as a performer primarily," Amber half-shouted at Anthea across the noise of the bar. "The pole-dancing and the modelling, they’re both about transgression, bricolage, a whole new post-post aesthetic being created."

_You're doing the pole-dancing_ , Anthea thought, _because you have a good body and a mediocre degree. You're running away from your suburban past but that doesn't stop you taking money from your parents. Your name is fake and so is your accent._

But who was she to complain about fakes, with a purse full of ID claiming she was Adrienne Johnson, and the key to the hotel where Ms Johnson was staying during her business trip to London? A room to which she could take Amber, née Somebody Else, later this evening and see if her performing skills extended to pretending that she and Anthea cared for one another before they fucked.

No, she decided abruptly, she wasn’t going through with this, it simply wasn't worth it. She excused herself to go to the bathroom, and then slipped out of the bar. Another small betrayal in a long line of them.

Why had she gone there, she wondered as she headed home. Of course all you got in a place like that was superficiality. But then that was safer. The Service didn't mind casual pickups as long as you didn't talk in bed or get pick-pocketed. It was the serious relationships they worried about, wanted to start vetting.

Sarah had been very discreetly vetted already, after Moriarty. It had been easy to confirm she was clean: an exemplary career, an uneventful five-year marriage and an amicable divorce a couple of years ago. No serious relationships since then, unless you counted John Watson, which Anthea preferred not to. No men at the moment; no women ever, apart from her. Anthea still wasn’t certain if that was a good sign or not.

Why wasn't a beautiful, intelligent woman in a relationship? Because she was thirty-eight? But that was her sexual prime, as anyone who knew about women would realise. Was she too bright, too blunt, not willing to play the games that men expected from women? That most men did: Dr Watson had seen her value, she had to give him that. Sarah was _real_ , not some plastic creation like Amber. Or the shadows and surfaces of Anthea. Why hadn't she realised, when she was still Anne, what she had found when she'd met Sarah?

She mustn't fool herself; Anne hadn't been Little Miss Innocent. Anne had been reshaping herself even then, becoming a woman destined for the top, an alpha female who would get everything she wanted. She'd known what she was doing with Sarah, taking what she could and then running away. Though there were other things Anthea knew that Anne had been happily ignorant about. She’d done things working for Mycroft that she would prefer to forget. But you couldn't stop real life and wind it back to the bit you preferred. There was no way back to Anne Zimmerman.

***

No way back, Anthea decided a couple of days later, needn't mean no way forward. Wasn't it possible that Sarah might still be interested in a relationship with Anne? An Anne. What was wrong with reinventing oneself, after all? Or with giving Sarah a chance to see her again?

A chance, that was all. She wasn't going to involve Mycroft in this; she mustn't trap Sarah into his schemes. He would know about her plan, of course, but only after the fact.

***

'Anne Zelig' walked into Elmside Surgery at lunchtime a week later, and asked for Dr John Watson.

"He's not working today," Clare the receptionist replied. She was the one who mothered the male doctors, but bitched about Sarah behind her back. Anthea was happy to make life difficult for her.

"Can you give me his home address, please? I need to get hold of him urgently."

"I can't do that, I'm afraid. But he'll be in tomorrow, and I think we've got an appointment or two left–"

"It's a personal matter, really important. Is there any way I can get a message to him?" Anthea stood there, persistent, insistent, as a queue of people gradually formed behind her. She'd made heads of state agree to her demands before now and Clare was already looking for a way out. Just in time, before Clare cracked and actually gave Anthea John's address, Sarah appeared.

"Is there a problem?" she asked politely.

"Dr Sawyer's in charge of the practice," Clare gabbled hastily, "Maybe you should talk to her."

***

Sarah's office was brighter than it looked on the surveillance cameras, but more cluttered. Up close, she could see the fine lines on Sarah's forehead. It didn't matter: she was the same intelligent, considerate woman, patiently trying to deal with the fallout from a rather hapless junior civil servant.

"What happened, you see," Anthea explained rapidly, "is that my friend Julia in the Service Personnel and Veterans Agency accidentally deleted Dr Watson's home address from his file. She...I'm not quite sure how she managed to do it. But if it comes out that she's corrupted the data, she'll be in really serious trouble. She wondered if I could possibly find it out, get the data restored."

"I can't give you Dr Watson's address," Sarah said calmly. "But I could ask him to get in contact with the SPVA himself."

"That’d be wonderful," Anthea said. "As soon as possible, please. Can I give you the number of Julia's direct line?"

"If you write it down here," Sarah said, giving her a pad of paper advertising acne treatment. "Oh, and...." She paused and then added: "Have you got identification of your own? Just to be on the safe side."

"Yes, I'm very sorry, I should have shown you that before. I'm Anne Zelig, from the MOD. Here's my pass." She handed it over. One of her less-used identities, but fortunately she'd kept it.

"Anne Zelig?" Sarah's voice was slightly tentative. "I...your surname wasn’t by any chance Zimmerman once, was it?"

"Yes, that was my maiden name. Do I know...oh my God!" Anne Zelig was going to remember now. "It's Sarah, isn't it? Sarah Sawyer. I should have recognised you. I, I don't know what I was thinking of.  You're a GP now, and I should have...God, it's so amazing to see you. It must be ten years or more. How are you?"

"I'm fine," said Sarah, grinning. "And you're with the MOD, now, not a diplomat?"

"It's a long story," Anthea replied, grinning back. "I, I don't know if you have time for a coffee sometime, catch up on things. It's great to see you, and you look so good. You haven't changed a bit."

"And you're all grown-up and lovelier than ever. It's wonderful to see you, Anne. I wondered what had happened to you. I don't know about coffee, but if you'd like a drink this evening, maybe we should go somewhere. If you're not busy, that is."

***

In the bar, Anthea let Sarah do as much of the talking as possible. The more Sarah told her, the less likely that Anthea could be caught out knowing something she shouldn't do. And it was always surprising how much people would tell a sympathetic listener.

"So what about you?" Sarah said after a while. "You're what, in a civil partnership, married?"

"Divorced, like you," Anthea said with a rueful smile. "From a man, though it's not what you think."

"What happened?" Sarah asked sympathetically.

"I was working in our embassy at Moscow. I met this poet called Mordecai Zelig. He was having problems with the Russian authorities, made some enemies, was desperate to get out of the country. I knew him as a friend, so I agreed to marry him, so he could get a UK visa."

"What happened?"

"Well, we got married, but then the embassy became suspicious, and they had someone go back and check my background and–"

"And I gave you away," Sarah said despairingly. "Someone came and asked about you again, and I said the wrong thing, admitted we'd been together. They found out about you being gay from me, didn't they?"

Making people feel guilty distracted them, prevented them from noticing lies, but Anthea wished she didn't have to do this to Sarah.

"If it hadn't been you it would have been someone else," she told Sarah hastily. "And I couldn't have stayed in the closet forever. You get sick of living a lie."

"Did you have to leave the Foreign Office?"

"I was luckier than I deserved. They shoved me sideways into the MOD, who were desperate for Arabic speakers. I'm probably stuck at my current grade forever, but my boss is good about me being out, very supportive. And someone even wangled an Israeli passport for Mordecai, so he's OK as well. He said in his last e-mail he'd met a nice girl in Tel Aviv."

"And you?"

"No, I'm... since I've been back in London, I haven't really met anyone. I'm a bit old now for all the earnest girls just out of college. But I'm probably better off on my own. I could hardly drag a girlfriend off to talks about the psychology of extremism, after all, could I?"

"What?"

"I went to hear someone in Cambridge talk about that recently. And next week it's Saudi Arabian abstract painting at SOAS."

"You always did have a wide range of interests, didn't you?" said Sarah. "Well, I'm not sure I'm up to modern art, but if you have anything in the science or medicine line you want to hear about, I'm quite often free in the evenings. Or perhaps you could even lower your highbrow interests enough for a film or two."

***

Anthea was cautious at first. This wasn't one of her ordinary seductions: this mattered. Get Sarah used to having her as a friend again before trying anything physical. Give her a chance to remember that she wasn't absolutely straight. So lectures and concerts and walking and talking and the odd glancing touch, but nothing openly seductive. Anne Zimmerman had been a flirt, forever finding excuses for wandering round Sarah's flat scantily clad, but she wasn't that Anne anymore.

The nineteen-year-old Anne had flaunted her sexy body at Sarah in vain, though. It had been being sensitively miserable that had got Sarah caring for her, comforting her, finally going to bed with her. She suspected Sarah still had a soft spot for the vulnerable. It might explain her attraction to John Watson, who was oddly, irritatingly good at being accidentally pathetic. At some point maybe Anthea should ensure that Anne sprained her ankle, or got soaked or...

No, she wasn't doing that. She wasn't manipulating Sarah anymore. This Anne didn't do that, didn't listen to Sarah's phone calls or read her e-mails – Sarah was on someone else's watchlist now. Anne Zelig gave Sarah space, left it up to her to decide where the relationship was going. Even as she was conscious of the times she stared too long at Sarah's body, or went breathless at her touch.

***

It was late night at the National Gallery, but there was something odd about Sarah's manner as she arrived that immediately suggested to Anthea that landscape painting wasn't on her mind.

"Can we go somewhere?" Sarah said awkwardly after a few minutes. "I think...we need to talk."

Anthea rapidly found a nearby cafe where they could sit outside: traffic fumes, of course, but the bustle of London made it unlikely they'd be overheard. She positioned herself carefully at the table: lip-reading from the side was difficult even with repeated viewings, and if necessary she could gesture enough to cover her mouth from the local surveillance cameras.

"Hope your latte's OK," she said, smiling at Sarah.

"It's fine," said Sarah. "I probably shouldn't be drinking coffee this time at night, but well, I guess it doesn't matter. I, I don't know quite how to tell you this."

_She's dumping me_ , Anthea thought in terror. _No, she wants to sleep with me. No, she's just been offered a job in New Zealand._

"Tell me what's upsetting you," she forced herself to say calmly, "Has it been a bad day at work? Is this the Andrew Lansley blues again?" She rested her hand invitingly close to Sarah's on the table, but Sarah just sat there looking at her, as if she wasn't quite sure who Anthea was. This was bad, this was very, very bad.

"It was at work," Sarah said. "I was telling John about tonight. Mentioned how I'd met you again after all these years, thanks to the SPVA cock-up."

"Right," she said mechanically, her mind racing. Had she underestimated Dr Watson? But surely...

"John, erm, John thought it was an odd coincidence, that happening," said Sarah nervously. "He wondered, well, you know, after Moriarty, the bomber, if you were someone else who was trying to get at him and Sherlock. So I said that, obviously, your name wasn't up on the MOD's website, but you had a Facebook page. And I showed him that, and..." Her voice tailed off.

"And?" Anthea said. Surely John Watson couldn't spot a fake Facebook page?

"He recognised you from one of your photos," Sarah said softly.

The breath left Anthea's body. The photos were deliberately blurry; no-one could possibly recognise her face from them. Then she remembered that Dr Watson had doubtless not been focusing on her _face_. She had to say something, do something, stop this, but she couldn't think fast enough...

"John says your name's not Anne and you're not in the MOD," Sarah said. "You're in the Secret Service and you work for Sherlock's brother. Is that true?"


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> What should Sarah do about Anthea's lies to her?

"John says your name's not Anne and you're not in the MOD," Sarah said. "You're in the Secret Service and you work for Sherlock's brother. Is that true?"

She waited. What was she going to get? Confusion, denials? Or had John got this wrong, jumped to some rash conclusion? But Anne wasn't saying anything, just sitting there, the smile frozen on her beautiful face, her hand clenched round her coffee cup. Thinking...thinking what to say.

Then Anne bowed her head and said, so quietly that Sarah could barely hear it over the traffic noise:

"I'm not allowed to tell you who I work for. You must understand that."

"It's not just that," Sarah replied, and she could feel her throat clenching. "He said...he said you'd have had me watched. That it wasn't just chance we met, that you'd have planned it all, set it up to seem like a coincidence. Is that right?"

"Yes," Anne whispered, and Sarah got up from the table, and fumbled her bag onto her shoulder and walked away, because if she stayed she would start yelling and crying, and that would just make it worse. How could you get through to a woman who would do that sort of thing?

She only realised she was going to Baker Street when she got to Charing Cross. She had to tell someone, but she didn't know anyone else it was safe to talk to. She was shivering from stress by the time she got to 221b, and John hurried her into a chair and gave her hot, sweet tea.

"What is it?" he asked.

"Anne Zelig, that woman I met. You said she was working for British Intelligence. I asked her, and she just about admitted it. And that she'd deliberately engineered meeting me."

John nodded. "I'm sorry, it must be a shock. But I thought you needed to know."

"Are they after me or you?" she demanded. "Are you in danger? Am I?"

He put down his mug and came and stood in front of her chair, putting his arms on her shoulders.

"It's not like that," he said. "Anthea, Anne works for Sherlock's brother, Mycroft. They're...they're the good guys, they're on our side. Mycroft would know better than to try something like this on Sherlock–"

"Something like what?" said a voice. A voice from under the sofa at the back of the room.

"Sherlock!" John said, "Can you _please_ not lurk."

"I needed to check the effects of a confined space on one's limbs and I didn't have a car boot to hand," said Sherlock, emerging rather stiffly from his hiding place. "What is Mycroft up to now?"

_Am I really about to explain my love life to a sociopath who hides under sofas as an experiment_ , Sarah thought, and then decided that she was. Because she hadn't come here primarily for sympathy, had she? She'd come here to make sense of what was going on. Unlike her, these men understood the world she'd somehow blundered into.

"I, I've got involved with a woman called Anne Zelig," she said, "and I want to know what she thinks she's doing."

"Then I suggest," Sherlock said, hanging onto the mantelpiece and stretching out his limbs, "that you tell me about your encounters with her. If I'm going to give you a diagnosis, Dr Sawyer, I need a case history to start with."

***

It was oddly easy telling Sherlock about Anne. He seemed to know the right questions to ask, could clarify her incoherent thoughts with a single neat phrase. _He's good at this detective business, isn't he,_ she suddenly realised. And John just sat there and listened, and smiled reassuringly and that helped too. They weren't treating her as if she was some hysterical woman, but as a case. And to Sherlock, a lesbian love affair with someone who was concealing her real identity was clearly quite tame stuff.

"I think that's enough data for now," Sherlock announced, after fifteen minutes or so. "We can already eliminate most hypotheses. First, this has nothing to do directly with security. You obviously don't know enough, Sarah, to be of interest to the authorities. And now you're no longer sleeping with John you're in much less danger of being targeted by our enemies. No one's engineering a bogus romance with Mrs Hudson, so I don't see why they should be with you. Second, this also has nothing to do with my relationship to John, although that's always a possibility to consider when Mycroft is involved. But if the aim was to block off John's options for sexual release elsewhere so he'd be forced to find an outlet in me, Anthea would have been breaking up the relationship between John and you far earlier."

"Sherlock!" John protested, "are you really implying–"

"I am saying, John, that Mycroft manoeuvred us into becoming a couple. Given that Anthea was the one who explained to you about my... _regard_ for you, I would have thought that was blindingly obvious. But she didn't attempt to re-enter Sarah's life at that stage. And by now, I think we can take it for granted that if we did split up, you wouldn't necessarily go back to Sarah on the rebound. You'd probably find another woman. Though I suppose potentially you could replace me in your bed with another man..."

"Can we please not have this conversation?" John said, sighing. "I'm sorry about this, Sarah. It's just...you know what's Sherlock like. Always has to think out every angle."

_Perhaps there were things it was better to keep quiet about_ , Sarah suddenly thought, and almost giggled. "So if it's not about security, what it is?" she asked.

"She told you her name was Anne Zelig?" Sherlock said. "Did you say she had a Facebook page under that name?"

"Yes."

"A look at that will probably give me the answer." He whipped out his phone and started tapping away. John stood up, and cleared the mugs away, and came and sat back down opposite Sarah. But he was looking at Sherlock, not her, and his gaze told Sarah that Mycroft had no need to worry about him leaving Sherlock any time soon.

"What have you got?" John asked Sherlock after a while.

"Something surprisingly obvious," said Sherlock. "I'd have expected more finesse from Anthea, but she was clearly in a hurry."

"What do you mean?"

"Her supposed friends on Facebook link to her pages and to each others', but no-one else's. They all have the same writing style and posting habits, and pictures taken by the same photographer. Who is a professional, with a very distinctive taste in patterns, especially wallpaper patterns. So the pages have been recently and carefully created _en masse_ by at most two people. They are familiar with the standard methods of creating cover stories, but they do not normally do it themselves."

Sarah was about to ask a question, but Sherlock barely seemed to pause for breath: "That fits with the approach to you at the surgery, Sarah. There was an obvious potential flaw in a story involving John, who might possibly become suspicious. I'm not surprised Anthea underestimated John, but Mycroft wouldn't have made that mistake. So this project was an independent effort by Anthea. Although obviously with Mycroft's tacit approval; she couldn't hope to conceal it from him."

"It's all just some elaborate hoax?" said Sarah, slowly.

"Not in the sense of being a joke, no. Do you know what Anthea's surname is, either of you?"

"M?" John asked. "No, I have no idea who she really is or what the hell she thinks she's doing."

It was a relief that she wasn't the only person baffled by all of this, Sarah thought.

"She most often goes by the name of Anthea Zelig," Sherlock said. "To call herself Anne Zelig is almost to reveal herself. She wouldn't compromise that identity just for a joke. Anne – Anthea – the woman behind those names – is, I deduce, very seriously interested in Sarah."

"She can't be." She stared back at Sherlock. However clever he was, she couldn't let him just make pronouncements like that.

"She was very ambitious as a student, you said? Aiming for the Diplomatic Corps and a fast track to the top?"

"Yes. She was far more focused than any other student I'd ever met. Than I was at her age. She knew what she wanted, always did."

"And one of the things she wanted, quite clearly, was you. She didn't sleep with you back then to buy your help; you said you were already her landlady. And she stayed with you as long as she dared, even though it would have been far safer for her in career terms to have been involved with a man. The most plausible explanation for her behaviour is that she loved you, Sarah. No, loves you. She risked exposing herself by coming back into your life. She wouldn't have done that lightly."

"I...how can she love me?"

"You're an attractive woman, she's a lesbian. I'd have thought the answer would be obvious."

John put his head in his hands. "Show some tact here, please," he sighed. "Stop treating it like an abstract puzzle."

"No," said Sherlock. "If Sarah wants sentiment you can be warm and comforting later. That's not my specialty. What she needs from me is an understanding of the situation. Or, more precisely, she needs to understand who Anne Zelig is, so she can work out what she wants to do."

"I thought I knew her," said Sarah. "I thought...is there anything real underneath all that?"

"Mycroft doesn't tell lies," Sherlock replied, staring out of the window. "At least not explicit lies. He misleads in other more subtle ways. Anthea lies about her past and her job, which is necessary, and about her motivations, which is normal. What has she told you recently about herself:  her friends, her family, her work?"

Sarah thought back. "Very little, actually. She said she couldn't talk about her job, and we tend to talk mostly about books, music, that sort of thing. I should have been suspicious about that, shouldn't I?"

"On the contrary," said Sherlock. "She deliberately steered you onto subjects where she didn't have to lie to you. Which is interesting."

"But how do I know she wasn't lying? She said once she was planning to go to an exhibition of Saudi Arabian art. Was she just faking an enthusiasm for that?"

"I don't know about art," John broke in, "but Anthea likes reading Persian poetry." Sarah stared at him. So did Sherlock.

"She did languages at SOAS," Sarah said, "but I thought it was Arabic rather than Persian."

"How do you know that, John?" Sherlock demanded.

"Asked her once what her favourite poet was. I didn't recognise the name, but she said it was the Iranian national epic."

"You asked me who my favourite poet was as well," Sarah said. "One of your standard chat-up lines, is it?"

John smiled. "I once got a very pleasant shag owing to having heard of _Sonnets from the Portuguese_."

"Yes, well leaving aside the fact that you were clearly educated in the University of Bedfordshire," said Sherlock, "are Anthea's intellectual interests substantially different now to those of ten years ago, before she became caught in Mycroft's dubious clutches?"

"His clutches?" she gasped. "Do you mean–"

"No of course, I don't," Sherlock said with irritation. "Oh, I forgot, you probably wouldn't have heard. Mycroft has now entered into a relationship with DI Lestrade, whom he had been lusting after ineffectively for years. The rumour was that Anthea arranged that as well. No wonder she's feeling rather left out of events."

"Can you try not to make things worse?" said John. "And besides, if Anthea was just looking to settle down, surely she could have her pick of women? I mean she could certainly have her pick of men. I'd have...I'm sorry, that's completely irrelevant." He was starting to go a rather familiar shade of pink by now.

"What John is trying to say, Sarah," Sherlock announced, "is that it's obviously you specifically that Anthea wants, and that's she prepared to go to some lengths to attract you."

"I don't...I can't live that way, with the lies. With not knowing who she is."

"A perfectly rational response," said Sherlock. "I doubt she'll trouble you again. If she does, let me know and I'll raise it with Mycroft. Now, is there any other aspect of the matter that needs to be dealt with? If not, do you happen to have a decent-sized car I can borrow? Well, the boot of it, at least?"

***

That was that, Sarah thought. At least it ought to be. So why couldn't she get over it, move on? Why couldn't she stop thinking about Anne...Anthea...her? Hearing someone on the radio and thinking: _I wonder what she'd say about him?_ Or seeing a book in a shop window and wondering: _would Anthea like that?_ And when she lay awake at night she kept hearing Sherlock's words in her head: _The most plausible explanation for her behaviour is that she loved you. No, loves you_. The surprised voice of a man who hadn't known what love was until he'd been overwhelmed by John Watson.

She was being stupid. Even if Sherlock was right, Anthea couldn't be trusted. People didn't change.

But if people didn't change, what had happened to Anne Zimmerman? Who _had_ cared for Sarah, even if not quite enough to stay. Who had been brilliant, beautiful, staggering, just as Anthea was. Who had lain in Sarah's arms as if it was the most natural thing in the world. Was that Anne gone forever? Sherlock had been right: when she'd talked to Anne – Anthea – Anne this last month, it'd felt as if she'd never gone away, as if they'd simply taken up a conversation from a week ago, not ten years. If Anne had asked her to go to bed with her, it would have seemed as simple as breathing.

Was it all a facade? Surely it couldn't have been. But she needed proof. She couldn't let it go like this, it burned and twisted in her guts that she hadn't at least said goodbye. She should...no. She had to be honest with herself. She didn't need to see Anne again just to end the matter. She could send her a letter if that was all it was, tell her what she thought about her behaviour. To see Anne – no – Anthea Zelig again was to admit that she still cared about her, even now. To make herself vulnerable again. Was that really what she wanted to do?

It was, though, wasn't it? Maybe it shouldn't be, but it was. Because in ten years of dating and marriage and post-divorce dating, they'd been no-one as clever and amazing, and, yes, sexy as Anthea. She'd come back into her life and everyone else abruptly looked second best. It was probably stupid to fall in love with her again, but it was a stupidity that sang through her body. She couldn't just walk away from this. She had to try one more time. 

***

"I don't know how to get hold of Anthea, or whatever her name is," John told her, when she plucked up the courage to ask him, "And frankly, I'm not sure I'd tell you if I did know. She's a bitch."

"John!"

"I'm sorry. But she's treated you appallingly, and, and I'm your friend, Sarah. I don't want to see you getting hurt again. And you know what she's like: she lies about everything."

"I still want to see her. Just talk to her, see what she has to say for herself."

"I can't help you, I really can't."

***

_Sherlock, I need to talk to Anthea/Anne. Can you tell me her number? Sarah_

_Meet you at the surgery at 6.30 pm. SH_

***

"Anthea's her preferred name now," said Sherlock, when he arrived. "Are you sure you want to contact her? There are certain risks in getting involved with any associate of Mycroft's."

"The first time I met you, I ended up fighting Chinese gangsters," she replied drily.

"Dating John is a rather unusual business, isn't it?" he said. "I presume you're asking _me_ because he warned you off doing this. He's quite protective."

"And you're not?"

"You're a grown woman, but this is going to take some nerve. Where would you go if you wanted to have a private meeting with someone?"

"I have an office at the back," she said, and led him through. Once they got into the room, he whirled round, scanning the office as if he was a camera. _As if he was a camera_.

"Have they bugged this?" she demanded. "Put surveillance in here?"

"It's the obvious place," Sherlock said. "Even Mycroft would think twice about surveillance in the consulting rooms, but reception and here are both likely. You sit at the desk here, they'd probably just have a fixed position lens and the walls are plain, so where exactly?" His hands began to sweep over the far wall of the room.

"Furniture's ideal, helps to give shadow," he added, his hands skimming across the shelves in the corner. He whipped out his pocket magnifier, stared hard for a moment at something on the wall, and then turned and leant against it.

"Hidden camera," he said, "which is now getting a very close view of my shirt. There'll be a microphone as well, so if it concerns you, we can relocate."

"How could she do this to me?" Sarah demanded. "She...how?"

"Oh, this isn't Anthea's work," Sherlock replied. "In fact, really, it's my fault."

" _You_ put it there?"

"No, but it's there because of me. Mycroft Holmes is my brother. John is my friend and now my lover. You are John's ex-lover, friend and boss. Therefore you are watched. If you want to be left alone, that the link that's easy to break. Fire John and never speak to him again, and Mycroft and Anthea won't disturb you anymore."

"I won't have them – I won't have _anyone_ dictate who I can and can't love, who I can and can't have as a friend."

"Even given the consequences that come with associating with John, with both of us?"

"Even then. So if I want to contact Anthea–"

"You do it via this camera. And it'll get passed onto her by the surveillance team."

"The team? There's a whole team watching me?"

"Not all the time. But because I've been here they'll be monitoring this zone particularly closely for the next few hours."

"So whatever I say or do, someone will hear it," she said.

"Yes," Sherlock replied, still leaning against the wall. "To my way of thinking that means you might as well say things that are worth hearing."

"Do I have any choice?"

"You've walked away from Anthea. As I said, you can walk away from John and myself as well and this will stop. You'll be back to your own safe world. No more of the Service watching you. "

"And if I don't do that?"

"You've effectively chosen to expose yourself. As you do by entering into any same-sex relationship, even if it's not with Anthea. People will talk, judge." There was a matter-of-fact tone to his voice.

"Will the people behind the cameras judge? Or your brother?"

"If you're not a danger to the realm, they don't really care what you do. When you get patients telling you secrets, do you condemn them?"

"I have my own views, sometimes, but it'd be unprofessional to express them."

"Mycroft and his subordinates pride themselves on their professionalism, too.  Whatever you want to say personally to Anthea will be treated in confidence. But you have to decide how far you want to go."

"How far would you go?" she found herself saying. Why on earth was she talking to _him_ about this, she wondered. Still, he would at least give her an honest answer.

"For the right person and the right reasons, a long way. So what is it about Anthea? Unlikely to be simple nostalgia, a desire to recapture your youth. You're not sentimental about such matters, judging by the lack of mementoes in the office. You're predominantly heterosexual, so it can't simply be sex that you want from Anthea. And, of course, her treatment of you would not cause you anything like so much distress if you did not have deep feelings towards her."

"I'm probably stupid to feel the way I do," Sarah said, leaning back against the desk, trying to will herself into calm.

"Well, Anthea is at least not likely to decide that she's really in love with me, which surely puts any relationship with her one up on your time with John."

One of the many things she'd needed to develop over the last year was an extremely robust sense of humour.

"She's also taller than John, and prettier," she managed to get out. Sherlock smiled.

"As well as being beautiful," he replied. "she's intelligent, competent and brave. She has to be to work for Mycroft. She's been his PA for more than five years, which is longer than anyone has ever previously lasted. Which implies she's also loyal, under the right circumstances."

"Who...who is your brother? What does he really do? Or aren't you allowed to tell me?" She'd heard so much about Mycroft, but she'd only seen him once, in some hospital or other, when John and Sherlock had once again managed to damage themselves.

"He does the necessary, but unappealing task of ensuring that Britain does not collapse into chaos. If you open the curtains in the morning and no-one's knifing somebody else for the last loaf of bread in London, he's apparently done his job. Or so he informs me."

"And Anthea?"

"Behind every successful man is a woman who can explain to him in simple terms how to use a mobile phone. She is essential to Mycroft, and her job is essential to her."

"So I can't ask her to give it up?"

"The Service comes first. Were you attracted to John because he was a war hero or despite that?"

He was always several steps ahead of her, but now he at least expected her to be able to follow some of his deductions.

"Anthea's a soldier as well, you mean?"

"In a different kind of war."

"I can understand serving your country," she said slowly. "Admire it, even. But if I can't trust Anne...Anthea, how can be sure what she feels towards me?"

"You can't, obviously. Caring for anyone leaves you vulnerable."

"Which is why you find it so hard?" Sherlock's eyes narrowed and his cheekbones somehow seemed to harden. He didn't like other people deducing _him_ , she should have remembered that.

"I have...changed my views somewhat in that regard. The currently available evidence suggests that Anthea is prepared to put considerable effort into attracting you. But there is, naturally, no obligation on you to reciprocate. If you need help in acquiring additional data, you know where to find me. I do not, however, advise my clients on emotional matters. If you'll excuse me, I have other matters to work on this evening."

He levered himself off the wall, and swept out of the room, leaving her alone. Except, of course, she wasn't. Sherlock's big brother was still watching her. On an impulse, she went into one of the consulting rooms and found a plaster, and stuck it firmly over the tiny lens in the corner that Sherlock had found. And then she got the radio from reception and turned it on loudly. Probably futile, but at least she might get a few moments' privacy.

On the radio they were talking about instability in the Horn of Africa. Was that something else Mycroft and Anthea had to worry about? It couldn't be an easy job, she supposed. A long way away from swish embassies and diplomatic parties. Even further away from the mundane life of a central London surgery and a thirty-something GP.

Last year she'd given a temporary job to a sweet, funny and overqualified ex-army doctor, and here she was discussing with the world's only consulting detective whether to get together with a spy. What had happened to that ordinary world of hers? But then Anne – Anthea – was extraordinary, always had been. Ever since she'd met her, she'd known Anne was destined for greatness, a shining star. But stars burned you up if you got too close. Was it worth the risk?

Sherlock had said Anthea was brave. Sarah knew _she_ wasn't, not in the way John was. But she'd done brave things sometimes, when the situation had demanded it. Maybe she needed to be brave now. What was it Sherlock had said? _They're going to hear you, so give them something worth hearing_.

She switched off the radio and announced loudly to the covered camera: "I've got a message for Anthea Zelig." And then she ripped the plaster off and went to stand in the middle of the room, where it could see her clearly.

"This is Sarah, Anthea. I want to say that I made a mistake running out on you like that. I should...I should at least have given you a chance to explain. I still love you, but it can only work between us if you're honest with me. You can’t keep hiding yourself away." This was unreal: was she just making a fool of herself? Well if so, why not go the whole hog? She took a deep breath and put up her hands behind her, to untie her hair, so it fell down round her face. Anne had always liked her hair like that, hadn't she? And liked Sarah's body, its generous curves.

"I'm not going to hide away anymore, Anthea," Sarah said. "I've seen the way you look at me, what you want from me." She started to undo her blouse, her fingers tense and clumsy. "You can have that, you can have all of me." She took her blouse off and then removed her bra. Not much of a striptease technique, but then that wasn't really the point.

"I will do this for you," she said. "You can know me, every atom of me" – _shoes off next, then tights_ – "but you have to let me know you, reveal yourself to me. I'm not going to conceal things, Anthea, but you mustn't either." She was down to her briefs now, and half of her wanted to cling onto them, keep at least that measure of privacy, dignity. But that was the point, wasn't it? There was no room for half-measures here. She pulled off the briefs rapidly, and stood there, naked in her own office, and then put her hands on her hips and began a slow turn for the camera: big boobs, rounded arse and all.

"This is me, Anthea," she said. "All of me, just as I am. But you have to show yourself to me in return. Who you really are. It won't work otherwise. Please, Anthea, do this." Her legs were starting to tremble, and she could not do this anymore, she could not, and then the phone on her desk started to ring. She picked up the receiver with a shaky hand.

"Good evening, Dr Sawyer." A man's voice, polite, educated. Mycroft Holmes or someone else?

"I wanted to let you know," the voice went on, "that your message has been understood and passed on. It'll take a little time to organise the reply, so if you could go to 221B Baker Street tomorrow evening, we'll have things in place. And for your information, the cameras in your surgery have now been turned off for the rest of the evening. Good night." The line went dead.

She clung to her desk, naked and drained, and thought: _What have I got myself into?_


	3. Don't you want me?

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> It's time for Anthea to tell the truth to Sarah, but her methods are unexpected.

"Why am I here?" Sarah asked Sherlock, when she got to Baker Street twenty-four hours later.

"To find out about Anthea," he replied, smiling down at her. "More precisely, you're here because there will be highly classified information involved and I have access to secure communication links. I'll also tell you now that the inside of this flat isn't bugged and that John isn't here. Given his prejudices against Anthea, I thought his presence would be unhelpful. So I found an excuse to send him out."

"What excuse?" She never ceased to be amazed at the havoc that Sherlock could cause on an everyday basis; she wanted advance warning if John was likely to end up under arrest again.

"A comment about the current state of his abdominals did the trick. He'll be back from the gym about nine, and he'll be delightfully hot and sweaty by that point, so if we could wrap your matter up by then, it would be handy. I have a sex life of my own to maintain, after all."

"You just love manipulating people, don't you?" she said, with irritation.

"Yes," he replied, still smiling, "but you're my client, so I'm not trying to manipulate _you_ this evening. You need information and you need to know it's reliable; you don't need coddling or pretence. If we're going to do this, we should get a move on." He led her through the clutter of the flat to the table by the window, where two laptops had been placed amid a jumble of other high-tech boxes.

"Scrambling equipment," said Sherlock. "What you'll see will be the equivalent of an internet chat session, but on a secured line. I wondered about audio and video, help in the lie detection perhaps, but there's so much cryptographic processing involved that I was concerned about the time lag. Right, let's get started. You are on this laptop, I'm on the other one."

 He started to type and the words appeared in a window on her screen:

_SH: We're ready at this end. Is AZ ready to talk?_

_AZ: AZ here. The first info dump is being prepared._

_SH: Before we start, some advice. If you lie, I will spot it, even if Sarah doesn't. And I will also recognise if Mycroft starts trying to play tricks. So I suggest you tell him to get his fat fingers out of this particular pie right now._

"Your brother's involved in this?" Sarah gasped.

"Releasing this much confidential data, he has to be."

She had somehow signed herself up for a three-way, no, four-way mindfuck with Anthea and both Holmeses. She felt a sudden urge to leave and find John at the gym, because at least she'd know where she was with him. _No_ , she told herself, _I am going to do this. I just need to work out what the hell I'm doing_.

"How...how do I know it's Anthea at the other end of the line?" she asked.

"A good question," Sherlock said. "I suggest you ask for information from your past that no-one else would know."

She thought for a moment and then typed:

_SS: Why did you leave the room you were renting in Streatham and move in with me?_

_AZ: I found Rigsby was spying on me in the bathroom._

Anthea wouldn't have talked about _that_ to anyone else, so it was her. And then more words appeared on the screen:

_AZ:  I've had last night's tape from the surgery securely destroyed. Though I wanted to keep it, because you're still gorgeous, Sarah._

"Now _that_ ," said Sherlock, "is not Mycroft. Mycroft's attempts at complimenting women are painful to hear." A moment or two later the next message appeared.

_AZ: Initial infodump now completed with pre-Civil Service files on AZ._

"Click on the file icons, and take a look," said Sherlock. Sarah started to open them.

"What’s all this?" she asked, gazing at the documents revealed.

"Scans of her birth certificate, academic transcripts, medical records. That's a good base to start from."

"Why is she sending these?"

"Last night, you asked Anthea to tell you about herself, reveal herself to you. Well, she's doing that in the most systematic way possible."

"I didn't mean...I don't need all this information."

"Yes, you do," he said, his pale eyes scanning her, scanning through her. "For one simple reason. If Anthea or Anne has being lying to you all along, the evidence will be in here. So see if this data contradicts anything she's ever said to you."

Sarah started looking through the images. How on earth could she remember what Anne had said all those years ago? But as she worked her way slowly through the files, some of it came back.

"Her date of birth's certainly right," she said, "and when I met her she'd just come back from a year studying in Syria, so that fits."

"Good," said Sherlock. "Anything else?"

"The one bit of the course at SOAS she really didn't enjoy was having to study Sufism."

"No, I can't see Anthea having a taste for mystic theology. And that's the only module in which she didn't get a first. She was an exceptional student, presumably?"

"I didn't know anything about her subject, but even I could tell she was brilliant."

"What about the medical records?" Sherlock asked. "Bold tactic of hers to include those, you're most likely to spot any discrepancies there."

Sarah worked her way rapidly through the familiar jargon. "I do remember her saying that she had asthma as a child and that she broke her wrist ice-skating," she said, after a while.

"What about more recently?" Sherlock asked. "She's included current records as well. Anything odd there?"

"She had a scar on her left elbow she didn't have when I knew her before," Sarah said, scanning the file again. "She said she'd broken her arm a couple of years ago, had to have it operated on."

"And?"

"Page 10 of the records. She sustained a gunshot wound which fractured the ulna."

"I see. An evasion, rather than an outright lie. Anything else major?"

"I...I can't see any blatant untruths."

"Good. Well, as I said, this gives us a baseline. She's not a fantasist or a compulsive liar, though I suppose it's unlikely Mycroft would have employed either. And if the files have been tampered with it, it's been done exceptionally carefully. Do you need more time to analyse these, or shall we go onto the next set of files?"

"This isn't real," said Sarah. "I can't...a month ago I was talking to this charismatic woman I'd loved when she was a teenager. And now I'm inspecting her medical records in case she's lied to me."

"If it makes it easier," Sherlock said, "think of it as a Turing test. Your job is to determine whether at the other end of this connection there is a real human being, or whether Mycroft has replaced Anne Zimmerman with an android."

"You do mean that metaphorically, don't you?" Sarah said, horrifying images suddenly crawling in her head.

"Not even Mycroft has access to technology that sophisticated," Sherlock replied calmly. "Now, if you're ready, we should get onto the interesting stuff. The secret information."

_SH: Initial material received and analysed. SS still prepared to listen to you. What's next?_

_AZ: I'm sending the vetting file from when I joined the Civil Service._

_SH: Good. We'll check through that and then report back to you._

"This," said Sherlock, "is where the lying starts. I gather Anne didn't want the vetters to know she was gay."

"No," said Sarah, "so she asked me not to say about our relationship. I don't think she was out to her family, either. She always wanted to spend her vacations in London, so she didn't have to go home to them."

"Let's see what else she lied about," Sherlock said, as a 'ping' announced the arrival of the file. "Take your time and see if you can spot anything funny."

***

Sarah was used to checking CVs, and this was similar, except with far more detail, a young woman's life laid bare on the screen. How strange it must have been to have your youthful behaviour pored over like that. Results of interviews with referees, and there _she_ was, saying how Anne was an intelligent, studious young woman, who had been no trouble to her erstwhile landlady. She didn't drink to excess, she didn't take drugs – Sarah was a doctor, she'd have spotted that. As for Miss Zimmerman's sex life...

"They'll notice if you find their questions awkward," Anne had said all those years ago, warning her about the interview. "So can you just sound as if you're prudish generally?"

How had Anne known so early on how to mislead people? But it had worked. Dr Sawyer had said that she really didn't know about Miss Zimmerman's private life, but she had asked her not to have boys stay at the flat overnight, and she'd been good about that. And somehow, this embarrassed Dr Sawyer had fooled the vetters; in all the weight of reports they'd accumulated about Anne, the Civil Service hadn't realised that side of her.

"You lied to protect her," Sherlock said, steepling his fingers. "Curious. Especially since you must already have known that she was abandoning you."

"I'd always known it wasn't going to last," Sarah said. It was odd to say out loud what she'd thought so often. "She was twenty-one, too young to be settling down. And joining the FCO, of course she would be overseas for extended periods. She was right to point that out, rather than pretend. If I'd tried to make her stay it would have wrecked her career prospects, and she'd have ended up resenting me." She paused. "At least, I presume it would have harmed her career." Or had that just been an excuse to end the relationship, she suddenly wondered.

"They'd have been very cautious even if they took her on, severe restrictions on her postings. As it was, they were still worried. Have a look at the final recommendation, page 32."

Sarah started to read through the page. Strong recommendation for Miss Zimmerman to be accepted, no major issues of concern, the only minor issue was...she stopped and read the paragraph again:

_Miss Zimmerman is an extremely attractive young woman, but has no steady boyfriend. While there is no available evidence of any tendency to promiscuity, this is a possible concern and monitoring may be necessary. In particular, caution should be taken in assigning her to any male-dominated section_.

"She didn't have a boyfriend, so they thought she might be a slut?" Sarah demanded. "How could they say something like that?"

"It was probably only prejudices like that that stopped them realising Anne was lying about her sexuality," Sherlock said. "She wasn't anything like careful enough. But then she was still an amateur at deception at that point." He paused and then added: "Was there anything else she mislead the vetting team about?"

"Not that I can see," Sarah said. "She wasn't...wild in the way that some students are." She had a sudden, vivid memory of Anne lying on the bed in Sarah's flat in a T-shirt and knickers, long legs stretched out behind her, as she thumbed through a copy of _Time Out_ , circling things she wanted them to go and do. And herself sitting down beside her, smiling, and stroking her hair and saying: "There are only twenty-four hours in a day, remember that, and I'd like a bit of time just alone with you."

"She was addicted to London, I suppose," she added. "But I'm not sure that's a recognised problem."

"There was worse places to be in love with," Sherlock said quietly. "I wonder if her overseas postings came as a shock. She had just under four years in the FCO, so probably on her second tour when Mycroft headhunted her."

"She said something about getting into trouble when she was at the embassy in Moscow."

"That would have been her cover story, once she'd been recruited. A surprising number of Mycroft's minions aren't officially working for the Security Service. In fact, I once met one who was supposedly on long-term sick leave from the Department of Health. Well, whatever she was up to at that point, Mycroft would have found out. So the next stop is his vetting of her." He began to type again:

_SH: Initial vetting reports read and digested. You were lucky to get away with your lies that time, Anne, but you didn't fool Mycroft, did you?_

_AZ: Is Sarah still there?_

_SS: I'm here. I've read your reports. What else do you want to tell me?_

_SH: What we *want* now is the vetting report done by Mycroft's lot from 2005._

_AZ: I've never seen that myself. I can't give you access._

_SH: You can and you will. You get it authorised right now or the deal's off._

"Deal?" said Sarah.

"I said I'd act as intermediary," Sherlock said, "ensure that all the data's securely deleted at this end. It's the only way Mycroft was prepared to release it."

"What's he doing?" said Sarah. "Am I just some piece in a grand plan of his?"

"We all are," said Sherlock. "Anthea started this, not him, but he just can't help interfering."

"Like you?"

"You asked me for help. But you can say right now: _I want this case dropped, I want to be left alone_ , and it will happen."

"And I'll never see Anthea again?"

"You can't half-know about her. Well, you can, but three months down the line something else will blow up, Anthea's lies will metastasise. Whatever you did last night was thorough. It seems a waste not to be thorough now." He turned back to the laptop.

_SH: Got your clearance yet, Anthea?_

_AZ: File being sent. One-time read only, please do not attempt to copy. Password will be sent separately by rights-holder._

"Is that the high-tech version of 'This tape will self-destruct in five seconds'?" Sarah asked, and then remembered that Sherlock didn't do popular culture.

"It is advance warning that we're about to get a call from my brother. Bring the file up on screen, first of all, and then–" Sherlock's phone began to ring and he passed it to Sarah.

"Good evening, Dr Sawyer," a posh, vaguely familiar voice said. "Can I first please confirm your identity?"

"I...how do you do that?"

"Can you please repeat the following sentence: 'The budget figures for this year are not looking hopeful'?"

"The budget figures for this year are not looking hopeful."

"The voice print matches, which is reassuring."

"Have you been listening in on our practice meetings?" Sarah demanded. "God, you must have died of boredom."

"Ask Anthea about possible efficiency savings via better scheduling of vaccinations, she may have useful ideas on that. Now, Dr Sawyer, do you have the file in front of you? Then please input the following sequence, exactly as given. Uppercase Q, one, zero, lowercase t, six, six, three, eight. Has the file opened?"

"Yes."

"Good. Please don't pass on the information inside to anyone else, or there may be...consequences. Good evening."

Sherlock was already eagerly looking through the file, but Sarah just sat there, staring at the cover: _Confidential vetting report (Special Purposes). Subject:  Zimmerman, Anne.  D.O.B. 21/11/80_. It would all be in there, wouldn't it? More of Anne's secrets, including the biggest one of all, which Sarah herself had given away. But not the real secret of Anne, Anthea. Not the person underneath all those facts and statements. Not that woman, the one she loved. If she was still there. _Sometimes when the wrappings fall, there's nothing underneath at all_.

"Your guilt is misplaced," Sherlock announced.

"What?"

"You're feeling guilty because you inadvertently outed Anne. You shouldn't be. Mycroft found two other ex-girlfriends of hers and her headmistress went a lot further than 'youthful high spirits' this time. Have a look at the picture on page 14. Though I'm not quite sure of the significance of the costume."

On page 14, a very young, very drunk Anne had her arm round a taller girl in a black wig and armour.  To Sarah's experienced eyes, Anne was one drink away from throwing up messily, but for now the excitement and happiness were winning out.

"I think," she said, "they're supposed to be Xena and Gabrielle." Sherlock lifted an eyebrow.

"Ask John about them." Sarah said hastily. "And the other girl was one of her schoolfriends. Nicki somebody? I met her once."

"Captain of the hockey team, according to this report, which I suspect is why Anne and she didn't get expelled when they caught in a rather embarrassing situation in their dormitory. Though they were  told firmly to behave like ladies in future."

"Poor Anne," said Sarah. "Just wanted to have fun and she got herself into trouble. I behaved terribly the first year at medical school. Good job no-one's ever needed to vet me."

There was an ominous silence from Sherlock.

"Right," said Sarah. "There's a file out there on me, with all the dubious things I did when I was sixteen. And twenty-six and thirty-six. Fine."

"Someone I know once compared Mycroft to God," Sherlock said casually, " _Unto whom all hearts are open, all desires known, and from whom no secrets are hidden_. It's maddening, but you learn to live with it. Would it help if I told you embarrassing secrets about him?"

"No," said Sarah firmly, because this was turning into enough of a fucked-up version of Truth or Dare as it was. "I...I don't want to read this stuff. If Anthea wants to tell me things, that's fine, but reading things even she's not seen is getting creepy. Unless there's anything that you think I have to know."

"Only one thing," said Sherlock. "Look at Mycroft's comments on the file. Page 58."

She read slowly through Mycroft's clear handwritten note, as it noted Anne's intelligence, organisational skills, resourcefulness under pressure. The familiar praise for someone with her exceptional talents.

"I don't see anything," she said.

"Look at the last paragraph."

_Normally, her having lied persistently about her sexual orientation and  relationships to the vetting staff would be cause for dismissal, and would certainly make her unsuitable for work with any sensitive material. However, in this case, I consider that her concealment can be overlooked, and that there should be no formal reprimand on her public record. I do not feel that her sexuality will cause any problems within the role proposed for her, especially given the wide range of liaison duties involved. Indeed, there may even be ways in which Ms Zimmerman's personal background is an asset to us._

"What does that bit about liaison duties mean?" Sarah asked.

"That she wouldn't try and seduce DI Lestrade. Mycroft's always been very possessive of him, even though it took him forever to reveal his interest."

"Presumably after he'd investigated the poor man to within an inch of his life?"

"Well, there are some things even Mycroft misses," said Sherlock cheerily. "But it's the final sentence that you need to consider carefully. 'Indeed, there may even be ways in which Ms Zimmerman's personal background is an asset to us'."

"I don't see the significance," she said.

"Sarah," Sherlock said calmly, "I think you should realise, given that statement and the recent medical records, that we can deduce one of the probable ways in which Anthea is an asset to Mycroft."

Recent medical records? Sarah looked back through that file on the screen. Nothing unusual there apart from the gunshot wound, healthy overall, sensibly had herself regularly tested for HIV...oh. Woman to woman transmission was theoretically possible for that, but unlikely.

"Sex with men?" she said. "Unprotected sex with men? I can't believe Anthea would–"

"Mycroft has a beautiful lesbian to hand, as it were. I'm sure she could make some men do anything for her, _and_ there's no danger of her being attracted to them. He wouldn't demand she slept with them, but if he’d suggested it was useful, she might well have volunteered. But this is hypothetical. Let's get some better data." He started to type again.

_SH: When was the last time you had sex with a man as part of your job?_

_AZ: My last honeytrap was June 2009: the man was Robert John Dugdale. I've now had myself removed from the operational pool for such activities._

"Dugdale," said Sherlock. "Well that makes sense."

"Who is he?"

"He was one of the biggest arms dealers in Western Europe. He's now in HM Prison Dartmoor, I suspect thanks to Anthea. Mycroft was trying to put him away for years; I wondered how he'd finally managed it."

She really shouldn't mind that Anthea had done something like that, Sarah told herself. She _knew_ Anthea had never enjoyed sleeping with men, she'd probably have hated seducing this criminal, whoever he was. And wasn't she showing double standards? Did she stop finding James Bond a turn- on just because of all the women he'd been with?

All the women he'd been with...Sherlock had been quite specific in his question, hadn't he? Had he not thought of the alternative, or had he hoped Sarah wouldn't think of it? With trembling fingers she typed in:

_SS: Have you ever slept with a woman in the course of your duties?_

There was a long pause and then the message appeared:

_AZ: Three partners_

_SH: Give details of the last encounter._

"Sherlock!" Sarah protested.

"You either know or you imagine it. I say better to know."

_AZ: Female surveillance target (non-criminal), February-March 2010_

_SH: Name?_

_AZ: It's not relevant._

_SH: Is here where the lying starts, Anthea? I thought you were giving that up? Name._

_AZ: Clara Watson_

"Now that," Sherlock grinned, "I hadn't expected. I think we can see Mycroft's fine Italian hand in that one." He typed rapidly again.

_SH: Care to tell us more, Anthea?_

_AZ: M needed to check on her after she and Harry split up. He asked me to do it because I wasn't involved with anyone and he thought I could do with a date. So I went out with her for a month or so but it didn't work out._

"Told you it was Mycroft’s doing," Sherlock smirked. "He has this appalling habit of wanting everyone neatly in line. Staggeringly tedious. Anthea doesn’t _need_ anybody."

"That doesn’t stop her wanting someone, does it?" Sarah protested. She waited for some crushing retort, but he seemed to be taking her conversation seriously this evening.

"No, I suppose not," he said after a pause. "It is surprisingly positive being in a successful relationship."

" _Surprisingly_ positive?"

"The pleasures of having someone close to you outweigh the inconveniences that result from caring for someone. While I think of it, do you want tea?"

 "You’re offering to make me tea?" she asked in surprise.

"You’ve just had a shock; it might help you. Well, doubtless it’s what John would recommend. I’d simply ask you to consider what prior sexual history you’d find acceptable in a partner." He leant back in his chair, steepling his fingers.

"If I say yes to a cup of tea, you’ll expect me to make it myself, won’t you?" she said, and got the expected half-smile.

***

She ended up in the kitchen, cautiously making tea, because it probably was a sensible suggestion, even if it was Sherlock’s. It gave her a few minutes to stand back, think about what was happening. She’d asked Anthea to be honest, hadn’t she, and in her own way she was doing that. If Sarah didn’t like the answers, wasn’t that partly her problem? It wasn’t as if _she’d_ never slept with men for the wrong reasons. But why Clara, she thought, as she stood in the kitchen and sipped the steaming tea.

"Why Clara?" she asked, as she went back into the living room.

"You’ve met her, then?" Sherlock said confidently.

"Once. She's very nice, but–"

"She's a sweetly amiable butch and Anthea is a floral-patterned razor blade, is that what you're trying to say?"

"I–," She broke off. She didn’t know who Anthea’s type was, except apparently her. Seven years older, and mostly straight, and completely unremarkable.

"Clara was safe. Mycroft and Anthea would have recognised that."

"Safe?"

"Loyal. Mycroft values loyalty particularly highly, I suppose because he’s such a treacherous bastard himself."

"Don’t you think–" she began, and then Sherlock suddenly gave a crack of laughter.

"Oh yes," he said, staring at the laptop and almost bouncing with glee, "we’ve got her on the run now."

"What’s going on?"

"I knew that was the way," he said, "reverse the normal information asymmetry. Don’t you see? Anthea’s used to being able to observe the other person, openly or covertly, know more about them than they do about her. Remove that information deficit, and she’s immediately less sure of her ground, especially in a case where’s she emotionally involved."

None of that made sense, but maybe if she looked at her screen...

She sat down, and there it all was. Beneath Anthea’s statement on Clara there was no reply from Sherlock. He’d been distracting Sarah with the tea, but Anthea hadn’t known that, didn’t know what was going on at 221B. She’d had to try and guess:

_AZ: Did you receive my last message?_

_AZ: Please respond to confirm receipt of previous message._

_AZ: I’ve tested the comms link and it’s working. What is happening at your end?_

_AZ: Are you still there?_

_SH: I’m here_

_AZ: Is Sarah still there? What is going on?_

_AZ: Please, tell me. Is Sarah upset about all of this?_

_AZ: Sarah, what do you want me to say?_

_AZ: You wanted me to tell you the truth._

And then the last message currently on the screen:

_AZ: Clara didn't mean anything to me, Sarah. I swear she didn't. None of them meant anything to me, till now. You can say whatever you like, I deserve it. But I can't go back, I can't unsleep with them, I can't not be who I am._

Anthea was panicking and what the hell could Sarah say in reply? She couldn't think of how to explain what was going on, and as her fingers stumbled over the keyboard, Sherlock was rapidly inputting something more. And, oh God, it was getting worse:

_SH: Have you ever killed anyone?_

She started to type: _You don't have to answer ***** his ***** questions_ , when Anthea's answer flashed back:

_AZ: Yes. Do you need details?_

"Stop it!" she yelled at Sherlock, and then realised it was no good yelling, because Anthea couldn't hear. Was there any way of ending the chat session, she wondered. But when she clicked on the window it didn't close, and it was too late anyway, because the words were already appearing:

_AZ: Francis De Moncy, working for Russians. Died in July 2008_

A new line appeared beneath:

_SH: How did you kill him?_

How could anyone type that fast?

_AZ: Cyanide._

And Sherlock gave a little lift of his chin, as if he'd logged the data, and then said to Sarah: "If you need me to confirm the details–"

"Just stop this!" she yelled again, because yet more messages were spilling onto the screen, so fast now that even Anthea's skilled fingers were mistyping:

_AZ: I'm sorry sarah I'm so sorry, not what you want to hear. can't we pretend this didn't happen, but you wanted me to tell you the truth, and sherlock probably guessed anyhow. there are things you probably shouldn't know. this is what my life is, this is why I hide away. I will send the files on de moncy and myabe you'll understand then_

_AZ: Or maybe not_

_AZ: because what I do is scary sometimes_

"Stop her now," Sarah demanded, wondering if she could somehow smash the computers. "I'm not having her do this to herself."

_SH: Stop talking and listen_

Sherlock pushed down the lid of the laptop to scrutinise Sarah. "Well?"

"Tell Anthea," Sarah said with determination, "that on my first date with John Watson, he killed a man in front of me. With a crossbow. Dead people don’t scare me. You type that, because I have someone else to deal with." She reached for Sherlock's phone on the table beside her and hit the redial button.

"Hallo, again, Dr Sawyer," came Mycroft's unctuous tone. "I do hope you're getting the information required."

"If you ever make Anthea commit murder again, I will track you down and throttle you," she shouted. "Do you understand me?" It had been his doing, it had to be, manipulating people the way the Holmeses always did.

"I think, Dr Sawyer, Sarah, there may have been some misunderstanding. Ms Zelig is my PA, not an assassin."

"She's just told me she poisoned Francis someone, with cyanide."

"Ah. That was a mistake."

"A mistake?"

"My mistake. She and I went to confront a former colleague of ours, and the situation got out of hand. We were captured and...threats were made. I thought it very likely I might be imminently forced to reveal valuable information. I keep cyanide capsules on my person for such an occasion. However, Ms Zelig was able to point out a more constructive use for them."

Anthea was working for a boss who kept cyanide capsules handy. And who sometimes asked her to sleep with arms dealers. But then, Sarah had nearly got herself killed by a woman looking for a million-pound hairpin last year. Her life had somehow taken this turn.

"Are you still there?" Mycroft enquired, after a while.

"Yes," she said.

"I would prefer not to have to discuss the details of De Moncy, or release the files to you, unless it is strictly necessary. Not one of the Service's finest hours. We knew he was one of theirs, but we thought he was also one of ours. But unfortunately we were wrong."

"I–"

"May I just add, Dr Sawyer, that it is generally unwise to make any threats against me, however aggrieved you may feel. But I do appreciate your concern for Ms Zelig, so we'll overlook the matter on this occasion. Good evening." He hung up.

Sarah was just about to throw the phone at the wall when she remembered it was Sherlock's. And, oh, God, he was still on the chat program to Anthea. Lines of text scrolling up, phrases flashing past:

_SH: Captured by a *Russian* agent?_

_AZ: that's what we chose john watson for, to protect you._

_SH: What do you mean, chose?_   _I don't need that interfering pillock picking my friends_.

And then another line appeared:

AZ: _how could you do that to sarah?_

Sherlock snorted and his hands raced over the keyboard:

_SH: Well if we're going to point fingers, Ms Zimmerman, what about Operation Zebra?_

"That's enough," Sarah said out loud yet again, and hastily typed in the one thing that could, perhaps, make it stop.

_SS: Come to 221B now_

[Part 4](http://marysutherland.livejournal.com/60257.html)


	4. Chapter 4

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> After the internet chat session from hell reveals all her secrets, what can Anthea hope for from Sarah?

She stood on the pavement outside number 221, trying to regain Anthea and she couldn't. Her compact mirror showed Anthea's face still there, but what good was that glossy facade now? In a minute, she had to go upstairs and face Sherlock and Sarah. And Sherlock would crack her open again so that Sarah could see the mess inside clearly.

It was too late to fight back, and all her weapons were the wrong ones, anyway. As a teenager, she'd led Sarah on, playing on her emotions and flooding her senses till it hadn't mattered to her any more that Anne was a woman, not a man. But she couldn't manipulate her way out of this one. Sarah was wise to her tricks now.

She banged the knocker and Mrs Hudson let her in, and the shell of Anthea languidly reassured the older woman that there was nothing wrong, she'd just come to see Sherlock on a private matter.

"I thought I heard him go out earlier, dear," Mrs Hudson replied, "but maybe he'll be back soon. You can go up and wait for him, but please don't try and plant any listening devices. You wouldn't believe the mess it makes of the walls when Sherlock removes them."

"Right," she replied, smiling. She hoped that was a joke; she was finding it harder and harder to tell.

Her legs felt heavy as she walked upstairs: Anthea Zelig off to her own execution. She knocked on the door of the flat. It opened, and her eyes went up to meet Sherlock's and then down because it was Sarah standing there instead. Pale, but calm, as if she were about to tell someone the bad news from their blood test.

"Come in," Sarah said, and Anthea walked in and stood there and couldn't think what to say. What was there left to say now?

"If you go and sit on the sofa, I could get us some drinks," Sarah said. "Is whisky OK? I think there's a bottle around here that's safe, and I certainly need it."

Anthea sat down and waited. She couldn't even think of a Plan A, let alone a Plan B. Well, except the usual Security Service Plan B. Run away and pretend this never happened.

"I sent Sherlock down to the gym," Sarah said coming back with two tumblers of whisky, and sitting down at the other end of the sofa. "He's probably causing chaos there, but John can sort him out. And I think if we're going to talk, it's really easiest without him. He does like to meddle."

"So does Mycroft." The whisky was warming her stomach, but the rest of her still felt cold. Sarah looked so warm. Warm and safe. If only Sarah would let her fall into that warmth.

"I'm sorry," Anthea said, and the whisky was catching in her throat, or maybe it wasn't just the whisky. "I don't...I've made such a mess of this."

"You have rather," said Sarah, soberly. "But it's OK. Messy's normal. You've done stupid things, but so have I." And then she looked at Anthea and said, almost casually: "I married a man I didn't really love because I got to thirty and panicked about being single. But you probably knew that already."

Anthea nodded. "I knew about you, and I’ve used that knowledge. And I’ve hurt you as a result."

"Yes. I suppose manipulating people comes with your job, but you're going to have to stop doing it to me if this is going to work."

"I’m sorry..." She swallowed the last of the whisky, but it didn't help. If she could only work out the right thing to say...She put the glass down on the floor beside her. Sarah's hand, gentle, but firm, reached out and took hers.

"I don't think the conversation this evening was exactly well-advised," she said, "but you have to admit it was comprehensive. Is there anything you've done that Sherlock didn't bring up?"

"I've killed people. Not often, but De Moncy wasn't the only one."

"I'm a doctor. I know about people dying. And...I've met people who I might well have killed myself, if I'd had a gun and known how to use it, just to stop them harming others. Though I hope _you_ don't normally carry cyanide capsules around."

"No," she said. "But I have done other things for Mycroft, illegal things. I'm a criminal, Sarah, you need to know that."

Sarah gave a slightly wobbly smile. "We're currently sitting in the flat of a man, two men, who I know for a fact have committed arson, burglary and drug-dealing. Probably a lot of other things, as well. I think it's a bit late for me to worry about my shady associates."

"What about the men? And...the women?"

"That's harder, though I don't know why." Sarah's blue eyes had lost their warmth, and Anthea could feel the tension in the hand gripping hers. "I mean, John’s certainly had a chequered past."

"I don't expect–" she said, and then remembered she wasn’t lying anymore. "The Service has no evidence that Dr Watson has slept with people he didn't care about to gain favours."

"And you have?"

"Yes, and not just for work. It's easier, not caring."

"I'm not sure it is, in the long run," Sarah said quietly. "But you have all you want from me already, don't you? You don't need to bribe me with sex. And...you do care for me, don't you? You wouldn't be scared if you didn't feel anything."     

"I love you." It came out automatically, and even though it was true, it seemed so banal, meaningless. She wished she could think of something better to say, but her mind and tongue didn't seem connected anymore.

"That's good. I love you, as well." Sarah's voice was kind, but serious.

"Of course you do! I mean, I know you do." _I don't deserve it, but she does. But what do I say?_

"So what do we do next?" Sarah asked, and it was too much. Anthea gave a wail and collapsed onto Sarah, her arms round her neck, dragging her down, because if she could just bury herself in Sarah she'd be OK. Sarah was warm, and she smelled of lemon soap and goodness, and all she wanted was to stay here, pillowed safely against Sarah's breasts...

A phone was ringing persistently – not hers, she'd switched it off, and who had Sibelius as a ringtone anyway? And then Sarah sighed, and very carefully detached herself from Anthea, and Anthea sat up and tried to pretend that it was fine not being in Sarah's arms.

"221B Baker Street," said Sarah, picking up the phone from beside the table full of laptops. "If this is Mycroft, I am not pleased with you." It was odd, thought Anthea, only hearing one side of a phone conversation.

"How do you do that accidentally?" Sarah demanded. "Oh, yes, as if that's plausible, Sherlock. Well, just don't get John banned from the gym, and drink plenty of water, or you'll get dehydrated." She listened, smiling.

"Can I suggest?" she added, after a while, "that you take John to a hotel this evening, he'll probably be exhausted. And you did say that your flat wasn't bugged, didn't you? Is it OK if we stay here for the night? Right, thanks. Take care."

She smiled at Anthea, as she put the phone down. "Sherlock claims that he and John have been accidentally locked in the sauna at the gym. It might take several hours for the door to be unjammed. And no, I don't know how or why he has a mobile phone with him in the sauna. He also says that John's bedroom is in a better state than his. If you want to stay, that is."

"Stay here?" Anthea almost squeaked.

"It's the one place in London where I'm confident Mycroft can't spy on us. I know I'll have to get used to having no privacy, but I'd like at least one night properly alone. And it's a bit weird, but then this is Baker Street, after all," Sarah paused. "That is what you want, isn't it? I haven't misunderstood you?"

_Sex with Sarah in John Watson's bed._ There was probably poetic justice there, but what Anthea was mostly starting to feel was panic. Yes, they'd slept together, but it had been ten years ago, and she knew Sarah really preferred men, and what if Anthea couldn't make it good for her, good enough for her...

"What's wrong?" Sarah said. "Tell me." There was a note of command in her voice.

"I'm not sure I'm as good in bed as John," she blurted out.

"He's currently in a sauna, doing inadvisable things with Sherlock," said Sarah. "It seems a bit pointless to worry about his heterosexual past." And then she smiled, and started unbuttoning her blouse, the way she had in the video yesterday that Anthea had forced herself to delete.

"It's OK," Sarah said, and her warm voice was starting to melt away Anthea's fears. "It's going to be hard, but we can work something out. We both want this, after all. So come upstairs with me now, Anthea, because it's time to make a fresh start."


End file.
